Edgar Allen Poe’s Inexplicably Mysterious Final Months
A legendary mystery writer’s enigmatic ending.
Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most celebrated American writers of all time, is also known for one of the most mysterious and unsolved cases in literary history — his own death. On October 3rd, 1849, Poe was found delirious and mostly unconscious at Ryan’s Tavern in Boston. He died four days later, without ever fully regaining consciousness, leaving behind a baffling question that still remains unanswered: how did one of America’s greatest literary minds meet such a mysterious and tragic end?
A Strange Life
Edgar Allen Poe’s life was already immersed in myth well before his death and rightfully so. Although born in Boston, he spent most of his life in Richmond, Virginia, where his father was from, having moved there after his mother died of consumption. This Southern identity would feature largely in his works and how they would become anthologized later. His literary career was mostly short stories in various periodicals and some of his early work would later prove to be enormously consequential, even though it is relatively obscure today. Stories like The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall, in 1835, which would come to be the inspiration for Jules Verne’s more famous work, and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket which features a story of nautical cannibalism in which a man named Richard Parker is consumed by his seamates in a desperate act of survival and would go on to inspire Moby Dick, seemed oddly prescient. This latter story is commonly cited in armchair theories that Poe was a time traveller, since the famous R v Dudley and Stephens case involving the sinking of the Mignonette, would involve a real Richard Parker who was also eaten by his shipmates, 46 years later. This is also the namesake of the Richard Parker in the Life of Pi and possibly the origin of idea of the tiger on the boat, since the dog in Poe’s story was named Tiger.
Not only were Poe’s literary efforts seen as legendary, but so was his athletic prowess. At least one person claimed to have seen Poe leap over a 21 foot wall, a feat bordering on absurdity. On another occasion, people in boats followed Poe as he swam 7 miles, upstream, across a river and walked home afterward, unfatigued.
Eureka
Poe had been traveling quite a bit in this period of his life, speaking on two works that would become known as his final. His last major work was a lengthy prose poem called Eureka, which was his longest poem at around 40,000 lines, about cosmology in which he outlines the Big Bang theory nearly 75 years before such a theory would exist. Not only does he outline a theory of how a single particle was emitted, dividing itself continuously into all of the myriad particles, atoms, molecules and matter that we see, but he also relates that same concept to the sense of time and things like black holes.
By the time of Poe’s writings, not a lot was known about most of these things. There were estimates for the speed of light, which were done in the 18th century, and some of those were close, but not any closer than his own (167,000 miles per second). Even more bizarrely, the correlation between time and space was not something discussed at all until the Theory of Relativity put forth by Einstein in the early 20th century. A few passages stand out in Poe’s text as particularly prescient:
I have already said that light proceeds at the rate of 167,000 miles in a second — that is, about 10 millions of miles in a minute, or about 600 millions of miles in an hour: — yet so far removed from us are some of the “nebulæ” that even light, speeding with this velocity, could not and does not reach us, from those mysterious regions, in less than 3 millions of years. ... In a word, the events which we behold now — at this moment — in those worlds — are the identical events which interested their inhabitants ten hundred thousand centuries ago. — Poe Offered the First Explanation of Relative Time — Eureka, 1848
The Newtonian Gravity — a law of Nature — a law whose existence as such no one out of Bedlam questions — a law whose admission as such enables us to account for nine-tenths of the Universal phænomena — a law which, merely because it does so enable us to account for these phænomena, we are perfectly willing, without reference to any other considerations, to admit, and cannot help admitting, as a law — a law, nevertheless, of which neither the principle nor the modus operandi of the principle, has ever yet been traced by the human analysis … — Poe Offered One of the First Critiques of Newtonian Gravity — Eureka, 1848
If, with a telescope of high space-penetrating power, we carefully inspect the firmament, we shall become aware of a belt of clusters — of what we have hitherto called “nebulæ” — a band, of varying breadth, stretching from horizon to horizon, at right angles to the general course of the Milky Way. This band is the ultimate cluster of clusters. This belt is The Universe. Our Galaxy is but one, and perhaps one of the most inconsiderable, of the clusters which go to the constitution of this ultimate, Universal belt or band. — Poe Offered the First Explanation of Galactic Clusters — Eureka, 1848
A Deeply Mysterious Death
The circumstances surrounding Poe’s death are as eerie as many of his famous stories. He was discovered “in great distress, and… in need of immediate assistance”, by a Joseph W. Walker in Ryan’s Tavern, which was also known as Gunner’s Hall. Walker wrote to a man named Snodgrass, who knew Poe:
Dear Sir — There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan’s 4th ward polls, who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears in great distress, & he says he is acquainted with you, and I assure you, he is in need of immediate assistance. Yours, in haste, Jos. W. Walker
When Snodgrass saw Poe, his physical condition was a source of confusion and speculation. A doctor named John Joseph Moran, who was his attending physician, described Poe as wearing “a stained faded, old bombazine coat, pantaloons of a similar character, a pair of worn-out shoes run down at the heels, and an old straw hat”.
He appeared to have been beaten and was suffering from severe bruising, cuts, and abrasions. Some speculated that he had been involved in a violent altercation, while others suggested that he had suffered a fall or been the victim of an assault. The exact cause of his injuries remains unknown, as do the circumstances that led to him wandering the streets in a state of delirium.
Adding to the mystery is the fact that Poe had been struggling with health issues for several years leading up to his death. He was known to have suffered from alcoholism and was likely suffering from tuberculosis, which could have contributed to his weakened state and susceptibility to injury. However, these health problems do not explain the circumstances of his final days or provide a definitive cause for his death. Moran, strangely, kept Poe completely confined in prison like conditions, until Poe died, four days later. Snodgrass and Moran would later differ on their accounts of the cause of Poe’s death. Moran would contend that he had been intoxicated from alcohol and was coming down from it but Snodgrass claimed, in 1885 that Poe “had not the slightest odor of liquor upon his breath or person”. This fact would be upheld later by William Glenn, who administered Poe’s temperance pledge, and claimed to have no reason to believe Poe had violated his pledge.
Who Was Reynolds?
It is said that Poe cried out the name Reynolds several times on the night before he died but it has never been established who Reynolds was. Some have speculated it was Jeremiah N. Reynolds, an explorer who featured largely in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. In fact, a large chunk of the text of Reynold’s Address on the Subject of a Surveying and Exploring Expedition to the Pacific Ocean and the South Seas are in Poe’s work. Reynold’s, a hollow earther, was also the author of Mocha Dick: Or the White Whale of the Pacific, a work that quite obviously figured largely in Melville’s later work. The Reynold’s chronicle, however, was the true story of an albino sperm whale, known as Mocha Dick, that tormented sailors off the coast of Chile. Mocha Dick was killed in 1838, shortly after the publication of Poe’s story. It is not clear that Poe was talking about Jeremiah Reynolds since it is not clear whether Reynolds was even in Baltimore at the time and most Poe’s story had been written 11 years earlier.
Curiously, there was a Mrs. Reynolds, presumably a fortune teller, who had been living in Baltimore just a few blocks from where Poe was found. She had been running ads, nearly daily, for her work in the year prior to Poe’s fatal visit. Fortune and magical thinking were prominent features in Poe’s work. Could he have been trying to reach her or had he already talked to her about his own future, despairing the news at the closest tavern?
Although purely speculative, it is interesting that Mrs Reynolds had moved from Philadelphia, which is where Poe had been living until 1845. There may be nothing to this theory but it the timing and location is intriguing. Mrs. Reynolds first ad was taken out in 1847 and her final ad seems to be in 1848.
Blame it on the Alcohol?
It is a well known fact that Edgar Allen Poe was an alcoholic for most of his life. It was also commonly believed that he had used a lot of opium, something that was more vilified at the time and viewed as a road leading directly to the type of deranged mind that seems characteristic of his style. However, this theory is challenged by a strange coincidence in Poe’s life, namely joining the Temperance movement a few weeks before.
While joining the temperance movement is not a guarantee that he had not been drinking, it was being mentioned heavily in newspapers at the time.
Griswold Grinds an Axe
One of the reasons that nearly everyone thinks of Poe as dying from alcohol in a gutter on the street is because of a strange obituary posted in two newspapers at the time of his death by someone going by the name of Ludwig. Ludwig was actually Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a literary rival of Poe’s. He used the obituary as a way to vent and paint Poe in a negative light. In the obituary, Griswold claimed “few will be grieved” by the loss of Poe, who had been wandering the streets of Baltimore in “madness or melancholy”, muttering to himself.
Bizarrely, Griswold, who had published some of Poe’s earlier writings while in editorial roles, would become Poe’s executor by “claiming that among the last requests of Mr. Poe” was that he become his literary executor “for the benefit of his family””. In this role, he published a “memoir” in which he went to work destroying Poe’s credibility by claiming he was an alcoholic and drug addict. These claims were vehemently denied by Poe’s living family and friends but because Griswold had been given “power of attorney” without a single witness or signature, these claims became embedded in the popular myths about the late author, damage which has proven extremely difficult to extricate from the writer’s image.
The Cooping Theory
One theory that has gained traction in recent years is the “cooping” theory. Cooping was a form of election fraud that was common in Baltimore during the 19th century, where voters would be “cooped up” (kept confined) until they voted for a certain candidate. In some cases, this could involve physical violence or even kidnapping. It is believed by some that Poe may have been involved in such an incident, which led to his mysterious death.
The cooping theory has been the subject of numerous investigations and speculations over the years and it was first proposed in 1872. However, like other theories surrounding Poe’s death, it still lacks definitive evidence to support its claim fully. While this theory does shed some light on certain aspects of Poe’s last moments, it is difficult to determine whether cooping was the direct cause of his injuries or if he would have survived even if he had not been subjected to such violence. It might explain the strange clothing but this feature of cooping is not widely discussed in papers at the time. It would also seem strange to go after such a high profile target for such a venture. Why would he be found in a tavern afterward?
Other Explanations
There have been a wide variety of other possible explanations of Poe’s demise. At the time of his death, most newspapers were reporting that Poe had died of “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral inflammation”, which were really ways of saying he had died from accute alcohol intoxication. However, the latter is certainly also a sign of being beaten or falling and hitting one’s head.
Others have proposed that Poe had syphilus and delirium was a symptom of the ailment which was so difficult to treat at the time. Some have pointed out that Poe was refusing to drink water at the time he was found, indicating a condition such as rabies, which features hydrophobia, might be realistic since it could come from any animal bite, and Poe had several pets at the time. Still others have claimed that he might have contracted cholera, which he suspected himself as having caught the year before when there was a major cholera outbreak in Philadelphia, where he had been. He had written as much in a letter to his aunt, Maria Clemm, “[I] have had the cholera, or spasms quite as bad”. In 2006, some of Poe’s hairs were tested and all heavy metal poisoning was ruled out.
Despite numerous investigations and theories over the years, Poe’s death remains one of the greatest literary mysteries of all time. Whether it is ever solved or not, Poe’s enigmatic end will continue to captivate and intrigue readers for generations to come.
Post Mortem
One final mystery which has yet to be fully explained is the mysterious “Poe Toaster” who began leaving a bottle of cognac and three roses on Poe’s grave beginning on Poe’s birthday January 19th, marking the 100th anniversary of Poe’s death, until 2009, marking the bicentennial of Poe’s birth. Without fail, for those 60 years, these items were left. The only person to come forward with claims of being the “Poe Toaster” was Sam Porpora, who was a historian at Westminster Church in Baltimore, the site of Poe’s grave. However, there are a number of inaccuracies in Porpora’s account, leaving behind yet another mystery in the wake of a deeply mysterious life.
